Saturday, March 12, 2011

NPR Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

When I saw that NPR had instantly caved after being slimed by known hoaxers, I started to write about it but I was so mad I couldn't make a sentence. As far as I'm concerned, even if their executive had said approving things about Sharia law and disapproving things about teabaggers, NPR should have defended him. They should have circled the wagons and counterattacked. Their federal funding is being discussed in Congress and their cowardice in this situation was an admission of guilt that is guaranteed to put them in the same trash can with ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

You have to fight. If the company really thinks the guy did something wrong they should call him into a private office and deal with the situation quietly. For NPR to go to the newspapers and tell them that they were putting two executives on administrative leave, that they were ashamed of the things their people had said on camera, was pure capitulation. It was the reaction of a loser.

Now, in an incomprehensibly twisted tangle of irony, Glenn Beck's web site has analyzed the raw footage and exposed how the rightwing frauds edited the video to make it appear the NPR executive was saying things he did not say.

There is a ton of it. They cut the tape up so he appeared to be answering one question when he was actually responding to something else. He talked about other people's opinions and the editors make it look like he was saying how he felt. Tons of stuff. You only had to look at the raw footage to see what had happened. And it took Glenn Beck's people to do it.

Wonkette tells the story well enough:

Glenn Beck’s Website Reveals NPR Lunch Video Was Edited To Ruin NPR

Whenever that James O’Keefe guy puts out another heavily edited video against some liberal bogeyman, both the White House and the Washington/New York media quickly fire everyone involved — because the only rational way to deal with claims made by partisan pranksters is to simply punish anyone targeted. That’s why Shirley Sherrod was immediately fired by the White House while the Lame Stream Media nodded approvingly and only Wonkette bothered to look at the allegedly damning video closely enough to see that Breitbart’s crew had carefully edited it to make Sherrod sound like a raving racist. Likewise, the firing of NPR executive Ron Schiller and his CEO boss was cheered by the liberal media and got solemn nods from Democrats in Washington. Only Glenn Beck’s reporters at his website, The Blaze, bothered to watch the unedited footage and note that the various bombshells in the video were taken out of context (the opinions of others made to look like the opinions of Schiller, for example) and that Schiller’s pro-Republican statements were (obviously) all cut out of the video released by O’Keefe.

Here’s the unedited section with Ron Schiller discussing the opinions of a senior Republican lawmaker and a major GOP donor. While Schiller seems to agree with the characterization of the Tea Party people at the end of this anecdote, it’s obvious he is quoting Republicans uneasy with the teabaggers here:

There’s a lot more of this on The Blaze: eight sections of raw video with written commentary by a video producer from the website. She finds numerous instances of editing to make Schiller sound like he’s replying to completely different statements (a bemused reaction to something about restaurant reservations is made to look like a response to implementing sharia law worldwide), and she also finds sections where the audio has clearly been switched from another part of the video, as well as the complete removal of many instances of Schiller and his colleague praising either Republicans or the Fox News audience.

And that’s where we stand in 2011 America, folks: If you want some basic journalism of the “actually looking at the material” variety, stay away from the Lame Stream Media and stick to a vile political joke site (that’s us) or the right-wing news blog of teevee’s nuttiest news clown.

3 Comments:

you still wonder why these liberal advocacy groups overreact and take these actions without even looking into the allegations

as you said, there are multiple deja vu instances over the last couple of years

I have a theory

I think they don't want any light at all shed on their activities because they know that most of heartland America has no idea what they're up to and so they want to end any controversy as quickly as possible doing whatever it takes to accomplish that

before anyone takes a hard look at what they're doing

are they right?

do American voters know that our tax money funds an organization which provides abortion services around the world?

do they know that their tax money subsidizes a media company that has ample assets and income to make it their own, when there are multiple cable channels doing the same thing and not requiring tax subsidies?

(btw do you have any idea how much income is generated by Sesame Street memoribilia sales alone?)

face it, much like the Wisconsin affair, what's happening here is that America has decided it can no longer afford to subsidize the liberal agenda

So Glen Beck's news outfit exposed the exposed video of NPR exec as edited to accentuate bias? Though I don't particularly care for Beck it would appear to speak better of his character than of the person attempting to expose bias at NPR.

Look...is NPR biased? Really now...do bears live in the woods? And I say that as a regular contributor to our local station, KUNC, 91.5 FM. In fact, if you put a gun to my head and said find Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or I'll pull the trigger than you would have to because all I listen to is NPR. So, how do I explain this? I guess I get more out of it than I give up and I filter for the bias.

“Rural public broadcasting stations are particularly dependent on federal funding for the operation of their service,” APTS said. “For many rural stations, federal funding represents 50 percent to as much as 80 percent of their total revenue.”

Many of those areas are served by conservative members of Congress, typically backers of budget reductions but also friends to local stations serving their own far-flung constituents, many with low incomes and few resources for information.

“The victim from this cut will be all of the red-state rural stations,” predicted Phil Smith, g.m. of KIXE in Redding, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Smith said he had warned Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.), who had voted for the continuing resolution cuts, ‘You’re going to be wiping out all of your friends with this.’”

Elimination of CPB would mean “we won’t just lose All Things Considered or Sesame Street,” predicted Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters March 1. “We would also lose a consistent source of innovation for the broadcast industry.” He said he’ll “fight for this critical funding as the budget process continues.”